WHAT NOW FOR CLIMATE JUSTICE? Social Movement Strategies for the Final Year of Struggle over the Next Universal Climate Treaty ADVANCED RELEASE – DRAFT COPY, Lima, Peru – December 5, 2014 Report compiled from the ranks of climate justice advocates and groups by the International Institute of Climate Action & Theory University of California, Santa Barbara AUTHORS: Patrick Bond, Michael Dorsey, John Foran, Pascoe Sabido, Jim Shultz, Nathan Thanki, Brian Tokar, Richard Widick, Emily Williams, and Leehi Yona Objectives: to increase climate justice participation and influence both inside the UN’s 2015 treaty process and outside, at the local frontlines of resistance to planet-killing twentieth-century fossil fuel development; to put climate justice forces on the record, on the eve of adoption of the next universal climate change treaty, which as currently unfolding promises to institute a neoliberal path toward global climate apartheid, defaunation, and ecocide at the hands of entrenched fossil fuel interests, both private corporations and state-owned oil, gas, and energy companies. COVER IMAGE: Richard Widick, 2006. Caracas, Venezuela 1 Table of Contents Appendix 1: Climate Justice Manifestos 74 Problem/Proposals 2 Compiled by Richard Widick and John Foran John Foran and Richard Widick The Durban Declaration on Carbon Introduction 5 Trading, Durban Group for Climate Justice, Richard Widick and John Foran Durban (October 2004) Is the Climate Justice Movement 9 Founding Statement, Climate Justice Now! Bali Ready to Scale-jump Our Politics? (December 14, 2007) (No, not yet – but we’ll need to, sooner What does Climate Justice Mean in than later, with Latin American Europe? Climate Justice Alliance counterpower) (February 2010) Patrick Bond Fear and Loathing of Carbon Markets: 14 People’s Agreement, World People’s A Decade and Counting of Climate Conference on Climate Change and the Justice Agitation Rights of Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia Michael K. Dorsey (April 2010) What Now for Climate Justice? 20 Universal Declaration of the Rights of Re-Imagining Radical Climate Justice Mother Earth, Cochabamba, Bolivia John Foran (April 27, 2010) Protecting Climate Policy from Dirty Energy The Margarita Declaration on Climate Lobbying: A Working Strategy Document Change, Margarita Island, Venezuela Pascoe Sabido 39 (July 18, 2014) New Movement Strategies 51 A Zero Emissions Manifesto for the Climate Jim Shultz Justice Movement (September 2014) Integrate and Escalate 61 Nathan Thanki Declaration of the Ecosocialist International Network before COP20 in Lima, Peru On the Evolution of Climate Justice 64 (December 2014) Brian Tokar Contributors 113 Global Activism and Global 66 Negotiations: Stop Accepting Climate Change, Get Active! Emily Williams Vision, Hope, and Power: 71 A Contribution to the Discussion Leehi Yona 2 Problem Proposals The unfolding climate crisis is defined by Let’s discuss together an “inside/outside” constantly rising greenhouse gas emissions, strategy for climate justice politics, based, accelerating climate change, and the as we see it, on: ongoing failure of international/UN and domestic/State climate policy to: 1) Encouraging and participating in militant, globally-oriented but locally-grounded class 1) raise the ambition of agreed climate and environmental politics and social policy initiatives to the level that basic movement struggles linking organic, site- climate science indicates is required to specific, bottom-up resistance campaigns limit average global temperature increase against carbon mal-development, with to 1.5° degrees Celsius (the Cochabamba simple messaging aimed at… target), not +2°C (the current UNFCCC target), and not +3 °C (the implicit 2) forcing developed, principal emitter Obama-Jinping target) – while states (namely, US, China and the European acknowledging business as usual is Union, and increasingly Brazil, Russia, India, already hurtling us toward a +4°C world Canada, Australia, and South Africa) to put (the number associated with the 2012 forward strong domestic policy that enables World Bank report Turn Down the Heat: and promotes higher ambition at the UN Why a 4° World Must Be Avoided); climate talks, especially as these concern the next universal climate treaty, both in its 2) establish an environmentally and substance and in the ratification struggles socially just and democratic international to follow. climate policy process that garners sufficient popular and civil society Concretely, 1 and 2 mean participating in representation to reflect the true depth of local struggles; being the voices in local long-term, inter-generational struggles that push for linkage across public/common interest; and municipal, state, regional, and member state climate justice constituencies; arguing 3) reflexively acknowledge the ongoing that now is the time for direct action civil failure, over 20 years, of carbon trading disobedience against fossil fuel mal- schemes to raise the price of greenhouse development, and that the message of pollution to anywhere near the level these civil disobedience campaigns must be necessary to incentivize the dramatic shift globally focused, while explicitly aimed at to 100% renewables required by the developing home-state domestic political UNFCCC’s deep decarbonization mandate, will to: a) put a global price on carbon (by and the related failure to adequately regulation and taxes, not markets); b) raise explore alternative approaches such as ambition at the UN climate talks (i.e., raise direct carbon taxation and public the targets to indicate 50 percent collective investment in renewable energy. reductions by 2025 and 95 percent by 2040); c) ramp up “additional” (i.e. not already counted or committed) and democratically accountable public financing 3 of all the UNFCCC climate funds (Green recognize the need and right of the global Climate Fund, Special Adaptation Fund, Loss South for sustainable development and and Damage Mechanism), and d) transform the well-being of peoples. intellectual property rights to drive sustainable technology transfers. 6) Ideological Struggle within the leadership of climate social movements in 3) Creating a Global Public Council on favor of neutralizing the forces of Environmental Economic Truth and neoliberalism that are presently blocking Reconciliation (or some such-named entity) domestic US climate policy and inhibiting charged with open and transparent ambition within the UN policy apparatus. evaluation of UNFCCC participation, publication, and public commentary Concretely this means, a) In the US, arguing produced by corporations, civil society and for constant attack on Republican denialism social movements, and member state and the “climate lies” industry/funding governments;1 apparatus (again the Koch example); b) development of a climate truth 4) Mobilizing support for and increase the commission/court, wherein an independent visibility of public scholarship in the service body investigates the lies and systematic of climate justice politics, by means of deception of the carbon capitalists and critical analysis of: traders, evaluating the carbon markets and market-based solutions already instituted a) the power and politics of the one and or/planned by the UN; c) developing a percenters; i.e., elevation of class politics radical/anti-capitalist front within climate to the front of the environmental/climate justice politics unified against false market- justice agenda; based solutions. b) carbon markets and state subsidies to 7) Continuing to develop climate justice fossil fuel corporations and state oil philosophy, politics, and policy initiatives companies; toward the horizon of global environmental and social justice, and away from global c) the climate skepticism industry; social and environmental apartheid. – for example, by raising the example of Basic principles of Climate Justice the Koch brothers to yet higher and more philosophy and politics: all people – poor transparent visibility and using the case to and rich – have an equal right to participate publicize the political malevolence of the in climate politics at every scale, and to one percent. share the social wealth and security 5) Globalizing the university fossil fuel afforded by sustainable development, as divestment movement in ways that dictated by the carbon budget afforded by the natural limits of planet earth, as 1 For reference see the efforts of EcoEquity in this determined by agreed climate science. direction, their Climate Equity Reference Calculator, and Climate Equity Pledge Scorecard. See also Norden’s 2014 8) Further development of Climate Justice as Report Equity and spectrum of commitments in the 2015 agreement. cultural politics – this is the ongoing search 4 for and production of new meanings, and new ways of making and disseminating meaning; new definitions of wealth and well-being (buen vivir; Ubuntu); new framings and understandings of how human-made laws produce markets that compel both state and private firms and corporations to externalize costs onto labor and environment; new ethics for a new planet marked forever more by climate change. 5 Introduction toward global climate apartheid, further Richard Widick and John Foran separating the world’s haves and have-nots into two great classes of climate winners Power concedes nothing without demand, demand and losers? achieves nothing without struggle, and this time, struggle will achieve nothing without conviction Or will it instead set a course toward expressed in direct action strategies